Rodney McKellip

Rodney McKellip has served as associate director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, since December 2021. With the director and deputy director, he provides leadership and coordinates all mission support activities for NASA’s rocket propulsion testing capabilities, as well as the NASA Stennis Federal City. He also helps manage a skilled workforce of more than 1,200 civil servant and contractor employees, as well as an additional 4,000 employees working for the 50 or so other federal, state, academic, and private technology organizations onsite.

Experience

Prior to his current role, McKellip served as director of the Center Operations Directorate at NASA Stennis. He provided leadership and strategic planning for a comprehensive and integrated program of institutional services for the center, including site protective services; environmental program management; construction management; facility design; facility operations and maintenance; real property management; tenant agreements; energy management; Center Chief Information Office management, information technology governance and security; logistics support; records management; occupational health; and food services. He also provided key leadership for operations and maintenance of the NASA Stennis test support facilities and for establishing and managing site Host Tenant and Facility Use Agreements with onsite government, university, and commercial tenants. 

In 2018, he was selected as manager of the NASA Stennis Planning and Development Office, where he led a team focused on master planning, investment planning, sustainability, and partnership development. Prior to that, he served as assistant to the center director for two years, providing wide-ranging staff support to the NASA Stennis senior leadership team. He spent several years in the Projects and the Engineering & Test directorates at NASA Stennis, working on multiple long-range planning and business development objectives for the center. During that time, he completed an 18-month detail within the NASA Headquarters Partnerships Office and a one-year assignment in England, working small satellite mission requirements for lunar exploration.

McKellip began his Stennis career in 1994 as a contractor providing field work for projects within the NASA Commercial Remote Sensing Program. In 1998, he transferred to a NASA project management position within the program, managing portfolios of agricultural and resource management remote sensing projects. He later transitioned to the Earth Science Applications Directorate at NASA Stennis, where he focused on developing decision support tools, using NASA Earth science data for agriculture, disaster management, and homeland security applications.

Education

McKellip holds a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of New Orleans.

Personal

McKellip grew up near NASA Stennis, in Picayune, Mississippi, where his family owned and operated the Sonic Drive-In for over 40 years. He met his wife Sally in Houston, and the couple married in 1993. They reside in Slidell, Louisiana, and have two children – daughter, Grace, and son, Jack, who both live and work in New Orleans. The McKellips welcomed their first grandchild, Lyle, in 2022.